Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(51)

I turned to the rest of the timeline as it started taking shape and scanned through it for other mentions of our name. Only one, I saw, and this was another event I recognized as something in which I’d been involved.

Call about possible large gathering of rebels, it said. Neighbors saw a large group of people, accompanied by carrier trucks, meeting in a warehouse. Definitely OH+, motivation unknown.

The city attached to the note was one I recognized. It was the place where we’d held our first OH+ event, and where one man had almost turned everyone in, in some bizarre plot to steal our exo-suits and get some sort of bounty from the local law enforcement agencies.

A man whom Zion had promptly killed, though he hadn’t told us about that until later. Now I figured I knew why. If Zion was part of Little John, it meant he was into something a lot bigger than we’d realized, which meant the stakes were a lot higher. They were messing with the government and didn’t have any patience for anyone who might turn them in. The idea of someone potentially handing them over to the enforcers had been more than enough to earn that man a death sentence.

Serious business indeed.

Nelson leaned back from the completed timeline, grabbing my attention, and shook her head. “Well, to start with, it seems they’ve been tracking this Little John for the last twenty years,” she said, her eyes on the timeline’s first date.

“And pretty efficiently, at least for the first ten years,” Jackie said, leaning over the papers. She put her finger down close to the starting date. “Look at this, at the start. It looks like they’ve got something once a week on them.” She frowned. “But such small crimes, really. Hacking computers? Stealing tech from small stores?” She looked up at me, the frown still creasing her forehead. “Those crimes aren’t big enough for the government to even care about them. If anything, they would have been handled by the local enforcers. Definitely not some super-secret government enforcement agency.”

I looked down at the timeline and saw what she was talking about. “January 1, local library’s files are hacked, specifically in regard to city plans,” I read. “Firewall down at the time due to damage in the wires after New Year’s fireworks.” I looked up at everyone else, frowning. “New Year’s fireworks? When did we ever get fireworks for New Year’s?”

“A long time ago. Before some of you were even born,” Nelson said. She was already on my tablet, her fingers a blur over the keyboard. She looked up to meet my eyes. “Something happened and the government outlawed them. Said they were a waste of taxpayer money.”

I glanced at the timeline again, wondering if that decision had anything to do with what we were looking at. More likely, I thought, Little John had used those fireworks events for their own purposes.

Much like they’d used explosions to help us get into the prison.

“You don’t suppose…”

“That the fireworks that damaged those lines weren’t actually fireworks?” she asked, reading my mind. “I suppose it’s a possibility, yeah. And that the government outlawed fireworks right after that because they suspected as much. Fireworks do, after all, provide pretty good cover for actual explosions. Though, that would depend on whether this timeline is factual or not, and whether Little John was actually responsible for that. Whether they could pull it off?” She shrugged. “There are explosives that mimic fireworks; that’s not the question. The question is how well funded Little John was at that time. If we’re to believe this, and believe that the government has all the facts, it would mean that Little John would have been brand new at that point. Would they have had the money for that sort of thing?”

I shrugged, then moved on to the next point. We had an entire timeline to go through, and it would take us all night if we dwelled too long on one particular event.

The next event was a robbery of a computer goods store, and a list of the things that had been taken.

“Nelson, what is all that stuff?” I asked, pointing at the list.

She leaned over and read through it, then shrugged. “Standard computer hardware. Stuff that anyone would need if they were setting up a home office. Nothing to tell us who they might have been, or what they might have been doing.”

“So how would they even know that Little John did it?” Ant asked. He scanned through the timeline with his finger, his frown growing deeper and deeper. “I mean, it’s all well and good to have this list of things that happened, but what good does it do if we don’t know how they came to their conclusion that it was Little John at all?”

Jackie pushed his finger away. “Well, they must be sure, right? I mean, they’re the government, and they have unending resources. If they put it all down on a timeline they must be pretty damn sure. The question is, how does it help us? What we need right now is shelter, and to get that, we have to find Little John. So, what on this timeline is going to help us with that?”

I glanced through the timeline again, desperate for anything that might help us—addresses, even vague locations—and then slowed down and looked again, focusing more intently on the timing.

“The government might have unending resources, but they’re not actually making much progress,” I said. I pointed to the start of the timeline, and then ran my finger along it. “Look. There are dates every few days at the start, with specifics for each hit. But later…” I ran my finger farther, where the timeline became more modern—and the dates became less common—then looked up at my friends. “More and more time is passing between dates. The government isn’t catching them as often. Little John is getting better at hiding what they’re doing. They’re getting smarter.”